National Antlers

Groping my way to my seat through the extremely dim Massey Hall (bumping heavily into one poor chap) I could hear a great deal of noise coming from the opening band on stage. Arriving at my second-row balcony seat I was overlooking a trio who were entertaining the already half-filled seats. The vocalist was also playing simple guitar into pedals that were reverberating the sound throughout the auditorium, while the stockin' footed keyboardist did his best in front of a rather great drummer. In fact those argyle socks were doing nearly as much work as his hands on the keys but whatever they were doing it was working. The Antlers' style of music, which can be difficult to translate to a live setting, was pulled off. For example there was a mid-set ended for about three minutes, which can either be grating or epic. In this case it was the latter.

Admittedly going into this show I wasn't a HUGE fan of The National - I'd been introduced to them and adored Alligator but hadn't felt quite as strongly towards Boxer (thinking it a lesser duplicate). With the new album being so new I'd been trying to get into it in preparation for the show.
The band took to the stage with confidence; all five core members plus a two-person brass section, and a multi-instrumentalist mostly on keys and sometimes violin. Matt's recognizable vocals only added to his tall stage presence. Immediately following the clearing of the press photographers he jumped to the audience floor and coaxed everyone to their feet (didn't take much persuasion). As people flooded the front of the stage, much to the chagrin of the ushers, and those who had paid top dollar for front row seats, the band carried on with another twenty songs or so. Honestly it was nearly two hours of great music. For me the Alligator section hit the spot with three or four straight tracks from that album. People could be seen singing along to almost every song though, even those off the recently released High Violet which seems to be quickly growing on fans of the band. I couldn't keep track of all the tracks though my friend did (and posted them) however I did find the set closer Fake Empire really caught my ear. As did the song I most anticipated, Mr.November, hoping for the sing-along so I could curse loudly in Massey Hall, and curse I did as Matt climbed over the seats to 20th row during the encore! That was followed up by Terrible Love, the excellent opener to the band's latest effort which translated well. They weren't even done, coming back for a second encore - an acoustic version of About Today before finally deserting the stage for good (well at least until retaking it the following night for their second of two shows at Massey Hall). Despite my reservations going into the show I was not disappointed in the least - it's hard to be with a set list spanning their entire career and nearly two hours - and for true fans of the band it was a show to be remembered.